[heylook]

This is exactly the main lesson of Finite and Infinite Games. There are finite games, in which the goal is to win, and there are infinite games, in which the goal is to continue playing the game. Using this framing, one can account for quite a large amount of long-term, large-scale problems as breakdowns wherein some participants choose to play formerly infinite games as finite ones, thus crushing their competition but destroying the game itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games